


love letters

by somethingradiates



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Letters, M/M, Separation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:03:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingradiates/pseuds/somethingradiates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for a prompt on avengerkink asking for bruce having to write letters to tony instead of videochatting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love letters

**Author's Note:**

> _technically_ bruce isn't a medical doctor, but i have a lot of headcanon regarding his total inability to not help people when they need it, so even though he's theoretically in somalia to do science-y things, he's also down there to do helping-people-things.

“You know,” Bruce says, running his finger down the smooth edge of the laptop, “I sort of doubt Wi-Fi in Somalia is anything to write home about. Or vidchat home about.” 

“If you weren’t running away to one of the most violent countries in the world, you wouldn’t have to worry about internet access,” Tony grumbles. 

Bruce knows it’s pointless to argue with him about most things, including his own penchant for disappearing to wartorn countries for months at a time, and Tony’s own ridiculous habit of giving his friends expensive gifts. This particular computer – a Macbook – hasn’t even been released to the public yet; Bruce doesn’t want to tell Tony that it won’t be any use to him in Mogadishu. 

(He probably won’t even be in Mogadishu for long – there’s supposed to be an outbreak of something that looks like a significantly more aggressive strand of West Nile virus near Bardera. He isn’t going to say anything to Tony, though; he isn’t sure he can sit through another one of Tony’s _stop getting shot_ lectures. Clearly bullets don’t do a whole lot of damage to Bruce – or the Other Guy – but he supposes it’s the thought that counts.) 

“It’ll be fine,” Bruce says, and steps forward to press his lips against Tony’s stubbly cheek. Tony turns his head at the last minute to catch Bruce’s lips in a kiss; it would be chaste if anything Tony Stark did could be considered chaste, but Bruce doesn’t pull away for a good minute or two, and only then to murmur _my plane is gonna leave without me_ against Tony’s lips.

“Your plane can wait,” Tony says decisively, and pulls him in closer by his hips. Bruce laughs and runs his hands up Tony’s sides and doesn’t argue. 

\--

Bruce is busy as soon as his plane touches down. He flies into Kismayu and has someone waiting to drive him the rest of the way into Bardera (although, he thinks, he should spent some time in Kismayu on his way back through), where he finds that yes, there’s something _like_ West Nile spreading slowly throughout the Jubba region. 

_Like_ doesn’t mean that anything Bruce tries works. The whole thing is an exercise in pointlessness, right up until his fifty-second day there, when he makes a small breakthrough – it’s a little bittersweet, because that morning had been particularly rough in terms of casualties, but when he writes to Tony that night, it’s a little more cheerful than it has been. 

_Things are better_ , he says (not _things are good_ , because things are never good in the far-off lands he picks to bury himself). _I went to the river today, ostensibly to take more samples of the mosquitos but more to see if I could spot a crocodile or not. (I couldn’t.) Johan and Amelie went with me, but I think that I was more interested than they were._

There’s a small team of MSF workers, most of whom are staying in Kismayu but a handful of whom are living in the same building as him, that Bruce has, to some extent, befriended. Tony wrote in his last letter to be social and make some friends; it’s just a little ironic, because Bruce is sure that Tony, better than anyone, knows not to make friends in a warzone. Despite that, Bruce makes an effort to be more friendly; his French is rusty, but the doctors – Johan, Amelie, Elisa and Markos – all know English well enough to hold a conversation on the off-chance that they have time. They know him as Tom, an American doctor with a lengthy background in overseas and combat work. He takes more bullets than syringes out of the locals, but it’s keeping him busy, and he’s barely heard a peep out of the Other Guy since he’s been here.

_I don’t have a lot to write about,_ he continues, _but there are a few pictures, since you asked so nicely last time ( not those kind – I need to be wooed, Tony Stark). I wrote on the back, I don’t know how up to par your geographical knowledge of southern Somalia is. The boy in picture #4 holding the Iron Man action figure follows me around every day; because I’m from America, he asks me if I know the Iron Man. I wish I spoke better Somali so I could make up stories for him._

(There are a lot of things Bruce wishes for Bardera, and Manhunag, and villages in China and Indonesia and Argentina so small that they don’t even have names, but wishing doesn’t do anything. Sometimes he thinks about the things Tony says – _anything you want, my love, name it and it’s yours_ , but he doesn’t think he could stand the cynicism and faint mocking that would come with his request.) 

He doesn’t say _I’ll see you soon_ , because they both think it’s bad luck; instead, he ends the letter like he always does:

_I love you, I love you, I love you. Bruce._


End file.
